Although the second-rank Girondins who remained alive were restored, like him, to their seats in the Convention in 1794, and were influential in producing the directorial constitution of the Year III, that attempt to get back to the principles of 1789 was no more successful than the first revolutionary constitution
Thomas Paine And The Girondins Read Post »
The author of Rights of Man suffered the condescension of posterity in many ways. He had known virtually every leading contemporary political figure in America, France and England, and yet not one of them publicly praised him after his death.
Democracy, War And The Rights Of Man Read Post »
In 1792, Rickman met Thomas Paine with whom he had frequently corresponded. They soon became firm friends and Paine benefited from Rickman’s knowledge of languages and classical education. Paine lived with Rickman and his second wife and whilst there he completed the second part of Rights of Man.
Thomas “Clio” Rickman, Poet, Bookseller And Radical Publisher Read Post »
The Rights of Man won an audience in the 1790’s because the Federalists in power moved away from accommodation towards coercion. Federalists strung the “strings” which Rights of Man could “vibrate”.
“Rights of Man” in America Read Post »
Basically, like all the greatest writers on liberty, Paine was a humanitarian. Freedom, in Paine’s view, could not be dissociated from political morality, and he sounded a warning note which still carries a message.
Thomas Paine and His Radical Contemporaries Read Post »
The propaganda directed against Paine, linked as it was with efforts to counteract early favourable reactions to the French Revolution, included in its scope misrepresentations of earlier periods when the continuous struggle for human rights similarly found expression in public unrest.
Thomas Paine And The Myth Of Magna Carta Read Post »
Paine’s Rights of Man was “the Koran” of Belfast, Theobald Wolfe Tone learned in October 1791 when he went north from Dublin to found the first Society of United Irishmen. Edmund Burke, an Irishman, lost the loyalty of his radical countrymen to Paine.
Thomas Paine And The United Irishmen Read Post »
The intellectual condition of England at the time when Thomas Paine entered the world in 1737 and for many years afterwards is well described by Friedrich Engels: ‘The peasants at that time used to lead a quiet, peaceful life of honest piety harassed by few worries.”
The Background To Rights Of Man Read Post »
Paine’s Rights of Man was prosecuted for libel not so much because of its contents but because, rather than confining his audience to ‘the judicious reader’, he had addressed ‘the lowest orders of the people – people who…cannot from their education or situation in ‘life, be supposed to understand the. subject on which he writes.’
The 1790’s: Paine And The Age Of Reason Read Post »
Of all the radical writers who knew Thomas Paine, the one whose work is among the least known or read today, but whose career was the most Varied and Striking, was Thomas Holcroft: Newmarket stableboy, schoolmaster, actor, playwright, novelist.
Thomas Holcroft and Thomas Paine Read Post »
Our President, our Society, and I, were made to feel very much at home at Thetford’s ‘Rights of Man’. The kindness of the organisers of the event will, I know, be repaid many times over in visits by members to the pub in Brandon Road.
A Stroke Of Imagination Read Post »
Paine’s rhetorical question brings sharply into focus the difficulty posed by this kind of writing for the literary critic. By normal standards his writing must be rated low, and yet what has been said here should confirm his mastery of techniques appropriate to the occasion.
Tom Paine And The Vulgar Style Read Post »
